Akane's Terrible Day
by Gaming Ikari
Summary: [Oneshot] Returning late home from a Drama Club meeting, Akane finds herself chased by a pair of thugs with predictable results. Rated for mature themes.


Akane's Terrible Day

≈

It was really late, I noted as I locked the door to school. I absently waved to Yuka and Sayuri as they left the school gates, going over the lines for the play the drama group would be performing next week. While we were once again doing Shakespeare, I doubted Much Ado About Nothing would cause the same sort of fuss that Romeo and Juliette had.

Ranma, Kuno and the rest wouldn't have to fight over a kiss that wasn't going to happen.

I smiled as I looked up at the few stars visible through the dusk, etching out a rough draft of the full night sky. It was getting chilly, and I realized I should have brought a sweater with me. A cool autumn wind scattered leaves across my path as I slowly walked out of the school's gates.

Within a single block's stroll, dusk had almost given way to true night, stars shining brightly in the gloom. With an audible click which made me jump, the streetlights kicked in one by one, casting bright yellow pools of light and further darkening the unlit areas by contrast. As I walked along the street by the canal, my eyes sought the shadows within shadows beyond the scope of the streetlights, trying to discern the source of a cough here, the scuff of rubber on pavement there.

I decided to cut through the park to save time. Cutting across the path, I did my best to ignore the pair of footsteps behind me and instead focused on increasing my speed, feeling a slight burn in my calves as I almost jogged through the rest of the park. I cut to my left as I exited the park, forcing myself not to break into a run as I noted that the nearest streetlight was out. As I paused to gather my bearings, I noticed that the footsteps following me had increased in speed to match my own pace.

I ran.

Closed shops and pools of light amid darkness raced by as I flew along the abandoned street. After a solid minute of running I stopped, panting for breath as ice gripped my chest. The footsteps echoed along the street, and behind me I saw flashes of two figures running through the rare streetlights, each brief appearance punctuated by the continuously pounding of foot on concrete.

I continued to run, darting down an alley while I was in the darkness, stopping and praying that they wouldn't have understood, that they wouldn't realize what I'd done. Cast into dark silhouettes by the lights beyond the face of the alley, I saw them pause, before turning to face down the alley towards me.

I slowly backed away, aware of a bright light illuminating me from a side door as I kept my eyes trained on them. Then the light was in front of me as I continued to back away, watching my two pursuers advance down the alleyway. My heart hammered in my throat.

They stepped into the light. By all appearances, two men in their mid-twenties. One sported a tall mohawk while the other had his hair bound tightly in cornrows. Both were wearing the colors of a well-known gang from a neighboring ward and both appeared to be slightly drunk, swaying from side to side as they advanced.

"Well, well," the first leered, his eyes sweeping my poorly lit form from head to toe. The calm part of me noted the way this caused his mohawk to bob. "What do we have here? A luscious little hottie on here way from school, huh?"

"Little girls shouldn't be out late," the second added, jabbing his partner in the side as he took a step forward, shifting the front of his pants. "Little girls like that should be punished."

"So school girl," The first began, slapping a hand on his partner's shoulder as he grinned, flicking a butterfly knife out from his pocket and expertly fluttering it open. "Are you gonna show us a good time without putting up a major struggle?"

Icy cold fingers gripped me. After all the fights, after all the craziness, I couldn't believe that these two men wanted to... I didn't want to believe it.

They began to advance once more.

≈

I woodenly walked the last block along my home's perimeter wall, my eyes tracing the familiar characters of the Anything Goes dojo sign as I opened the gate door. I absently shifted my schoolbag, taking my shoes off out of habit as I entered the house.

"Yo, Akane..." Ranma called, casually leaning back from his seat at the dining room table tp peer at me in the hallway. His eyes shifted with concern and he got up. He noticed the tear in my dress. "Hey, you okay!?"

My eyes met his.

"I'm fine, Ranma," I muttered, tossing my bag to the side of the dining room. I scowled at the lucky cut the thug had gotten on my dress. I was supposed to be a martial artist, but a bully with a weapon had managed to nearly cut my skin.

They'd been a pathetic challenge, neither of them even up to the standards of the Hentai Horde. The jerk with the knife had managed to get one lucky cut in before I'd broken his jaw with just one measly right cross, while his friend with the cornrows hadn't even managed to complete a punch before I'd collapsed his cheekbone, nose and knocked loose four teeth with a heel kick.

"Those stupid Yakuza jerks forgot to let their newest batch of thugs know not to come to Nerima," I spat, giving the dress up as a loss.

"Weird," Ranma commented, walking back into the dining room. "They're usually smart enough not to mess with anyone in Nerima. Last guy who tried to extort someone wound up with a permanent aversion to hot water thanks to the old ghoul."

I followed him into the dining room, resolving to slug the next stupid thug extra hard for the rip in my dress.

≈

Author's Notes

This one's pretty simple, mainly directed at those fanfiction authors who write Akane as a normal person and was actually written in response to some fic or another which I was reading where Akane was able to be overcome by two regular muggers and... yeah.

Don't get me wrong, Akane's no powerhouse by any stretch but in "real world" terms, she is to the average healthy adult male what post-Volume 38 Ranma is to Akane. Muggers and even "trained martial artists" (real world terms, not Ranmaverse terms) are a joke to her.


End file.
